1. News, Culture and Public Life.
- Author
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Ryfe, DavidM.
- Subjects
- *
MASS media & culture , *MASS media , *PUBLIC relations , *HISTORY of journalism , *JOURNALISM , *JOURNALISTS , *PRESS , *AMERICAN newspapers , *NEWSPAPERS - Abstract
In an analysis of news conventions used by 19th-century American newspapers, I show that the news of this time period took much the same form. Across geography, size of paper, and kind of paper (associational, commercial, partisan), newspapers shared the same conventions. I explain this uniformity in terms of James Carey's notion that the news expresses a form of public life. In this case, I argue that 19th-century news expressed a form of public life that was deeply imbued with values of association, affiliation, and partisanship. As newspapers expressed these values, they ritually reinforced a particular image of public life. I argue that this cultural approach to news conventions accounts for the available evidence in ways that may help the field move beyond functionalist explanations of news. In so doing, it opens new directions for understanding the relationship between news generally, and the public life in which it is situated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006
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